


The Attributes of Fiends: Bellatrix in Canon and Fandom

by sharivan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Analysis, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-17 21:40:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16982307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharivan/pseuds/sharivan
Summary: Bellatrix and fandom and the ways we talk about women who kill.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Team, this is an essay. It's about Harry Potter and fanfic, though, so I'm posting it to the Archive as is.

In Rowling’s Harry Potter books Bellatrix Lestrange is a mysterious and somewhat inconsistent character. A reader must pay close attention to keep track of her marital status from book to book, much less understand her motivations. I am fascinated by the unexplained changes in Bellatrix’s portrayal as the series progresses and by the indirect relationship between her actions and reputation compared to those of other Death Eaters. In this Bellatrix falls into popular Western conceptions of transgressive and violent women. Examining Rowling’s books alongside fanworks allows for a broad understanding of how these ideas are received by contemporary readers as well as how those readers make sense of such a roughly drawn character.

Bellatrix is one of two female Death Eaters. Harry Potter’s gender roles are quite conservative. Most witches marry and become homemakers; even those few who act outside their homes are portrayed as subordinate to a male authority (Mendlesohn; Heilman). When she is first introduced Bellatrix is at least plausibly subordinate to her husband, Rodolphus Lestrange. As the series continues, Rodolphus goes unmentioned and Bellatrix is subordinate only to Voldemort, the Death Eaters’ leader. As this shift occurs it is strongly implied that Bellatrix is in love with Voldemort. It is difficult to say why Bellatrix joined the Death Eaters to begin with – while her family expected its sons to do so, their daughters were meant only to secure “lovely, respectable pure-blood marriages”, which both Bellatrix and her younger sister Narcissa achieved ( _Order of the Phoenix_ 113).

Bellatrix and her husband are initially distinguished by their unusual loyalty. Accompanied by two other Death Eaters, they tortured two wizards into insanity in an attempt to get information about their fallen leader Voldemort. The Lestranges’ willingness to risk prison and death are especially unusual among the generally self-interested Death Eaters, a difference which goes unexplored. It is unclear how deeply Bellatrix is affected by a decade in Azkaban, guarded by Dementors who devour its inmates’ happiness. It is unclear whether Bellatrix’s loyalty lies with Voldemort personally or with his cause. While Bellatrix’s actions and reputation receive attention in the books, her motivations do not. Bellatrix remains a cipher even as other prominent Death Eaters, including Lucius Malfoy and Severus Snape, are given reasons for their actions.

Examining historical accounts of public reactions to unconventional, criminal, and violent women contextualizes Bellatrix’s story. The wizarding world’s societal structure and norms owe a great deal to nineteenth century Britain (Polster, O’Keefe, Mayes-Elma). The same expectations of domesticity and submission for wealthy women are present in the novels. Victorian women who failed to meet these expectations were often considered morally bankrupt or insane (McCandless). In fact, when discussing typical cases of mental illness “doctors usually described women who were disobedient, rebellious, or in open protest against the female role” (Showalter 324). Madness, evil, and transgression more broadly were all closely related to common nineteenth century ideas about women and crime. In her analysis of female Victorian criminals, Zedner notes that failing to fulfill a woman’s role was thought to lead inexorably to criminal behavior – and the weight of this expectation meant it often did. Unconventional behavior was not merely a sign of future crimes but inseparable from crime itself. Women were often judged “not according to the act committed or to the damage done but according to how far a woman’s behavior contravened the norms of femininity” (Zedner 28). In acting violently outside the home – and doing so more effectively than her husband – Bellatrix is unfeminine indeed. She commits serious crimes, including torture and murder; this is typical among the predominantly male Death Eaters. Yet only Bellatrix is known to be “as mad as her master,” to have “a feverish, fanatical glow” ( _Deathly Hallows_ 736; _Order of the Phoenix_ 783). A number of Death Eaters attack children when expedient, but it is Bellatrix who dies at the hands of a mother so she “will – never – touch – our – children – again!” ( _Deathly Hallows_ 736). In a group whose members commit similar offenses, Bellatrix is considered especially evil and unstable.

If criminal women act as they do because they are inherently insane or evil, motive becomes a moot point. After all, motive implies a certain degree of rationality (Zedner 29). Historical accounts of nineteenth century female criminals in both Britain and the United States become particularly convoluted when addressing motive. In 1859 Ann Bilansky was tried for poisoning her husband. According to Jones,

 

 

> The St. Paul Pioneer and Democrat evaluated the case as a “repetition of a tragedy, which has been enacted all the world over, wherever a woman, bad enough to be a harlot and bold enough to be a murderer, has wished to get rid of a husband whom she disliked, for a paramour whom she preferred.” But having analyzed the motive as adulterous love - the prosecution's theory - the newspaper went on to say in the same editorial that this perfectly “cold-blooded” murder was “apparently without any adequate motive...It could not have been for money for the man was poor; nor to get rid of matrimonial chains which were no restraint on the inclinations of the murderess.” But the paper resolved the issue of the lack of motive once and for all by turning it against Ann Bilansky: “It is this very absence of any explainable human motive which gives to the deed its most hideous features, and compels us to seek its explanation in the attributes of fiends.” (215)

The only motive women could reliably be assigned was passion. In the popular imagination a criminal woman was led into crime either by overpowering devotion to a particular man, “however vicious a criminal or brutal a lover he was” or by an excess of sexual passion in general, regardless of how little her specific crimes had to do with sex (Zedner 58). Bellatrix and her husband are sent to prison together and spoken of in one breath while they remain there: “The Lestranges should stand here,” “Bellatrix and her husband Rodolphus” ( _Goblet of Fire_ 650, _Order of the Phoenix_ 114). Perhaps Bellatrix did join the Death Eaters for love of Rodolphus. After escaping from prison she is apparently driven by love of Voldemort, leaning “toward Voldemort, for mere words could not demonstrate her longing for closeness” and speaking to him “as if to a lover” ( _Deathly Hallows_ 9, 724). The escape from Azkaban also marks the point at which Bellatrix becomes an increasingly significant character and her relationship with Rodolphus is no longer mentioned.

In the popular imagination Victorian criminal women were corrupted by evil men and corrupted others in turn. Often “[w]hen a man and a woman seemed to be accomplices in murder, men found it reassuring to pin the crime on the man and to ignore the woman’s motives and her ability to act” (Jones 120). At the same time male criminals would often claim they had been driven to commit their crimes by evil women (Zedner 49). Jones and Zedner do not articulate whether criminal women were considered more hapless sidekicks or diabolical masterminds; perhaps the public was equally uncertain. Bellatrix Lestrange and Alecto Carrow, the only female Death Eaters,[1] are both introduced as subordinate to men – Bellatrix to her husband, Alecto to her brother. Alecto remains sadistic but subordinate throughout the series; she doesn’t appear to lead anyone into evil. Bellatrix surpasses Rodolphus and in doing so becomes remarkably, charismatically evil. Suddenly the Longbottoms were tortured not by four Death Eaters but by “Bellatrix Lestrange and a couple of Death Eater cronies” ( _Half-Blood Prince_ 145). She is held disproportionately responsible. Still, Bellatrix does not move entirely from the role of sidekick to mastermind; her devotion transfers from her husband to Voldemort himself. The details hardly matter so long as she is held in check by a man whom she loves.

Bellatrix’s reputation as uniquely evil also depends on the distance between her actions and expected behavior for witches of her class. Her younger sister Narcissa shares Bellatrix’s xenophobic politics but acts primarily within her home and is humanized by her love for her son. Bellatrix, brutal and childless, doesn’t share her sister’s redeeming qualities. She has family feeling only for Narcissa; when her grieving sister would oppose Voldemort in order to protect her son, Bellatrix tells her she “should be proud! … If I had sons, I would be glad to give them to the service of the Dark Lord!” ( _Half-Blood Prince_ 35). Women have often been thought to lack moral complexity, to be “ _either_ good or bad, for ‘in the female character there is no mid-region; it must exist in spotless innocence, or else in hopeless vice’” (Jones 141). Of course, femininity and innocence go hand in hand. In the mid-nineteenth century the American criminal justice system considered female criminals more difficult to reform than male criminals because through her rejection of feminine virtue “the female criminal was more depraved than her male counterpart … more likely to reach the depths of sinfulness and commit the most heinous of crimes” (Freedman 17-18). Similar views were held in England (Zedner). Ann Bilansky of the incoherent motives and fiendish attributes was hanged for murdering her husband at a time when men who killed their wives in the same jurisdiction were generally sentenced to a few years in prison (Jones 217). It’s remarkably pervasive, the belief that women ought to be better than men and must be positively demonic if they fail to be. Consider Bellatrix Lestrange and her brother-in-law Lucius Malfoy. Both are children of powerful pureblood families who marry other purebloods. Lucius and Bellatrix join Voldemort early on; apart from gender considerations they are first differentiated when Voldemort falls. Bellatrix goes to some lengths to discover what happened to him and is sent to the prison Azkaban as a result. Lucius successfully argues that he was never a Death Eater at all, retaining his freedom and power. Perhaps his sanity is preserved as well; if exposure to Dementors can immediately lead to fainting spells and symptoms of depression, years of exposure would have a profound impact on Azkaban’s inhabitants. At this point if Lucius truly renounced his Death Eater sympathies he might well be the less villainous of the two. Instead he merely maintains plausible deniability. He warns his son “it is not – prudent – to appear less than fond of Harry Potter, not when most of our kind regard him as the hero who made the Dark Lord disappear” ( _Chamber of Secrets_ 50). Shortly afterwards Lucius gives Voldemort’s diary to Ginny Weasley, then age eleven. The diary possesses Ginny and uses her to terrorize the school and endanger its students. Lucius threatens to curse other powerful wizards’ families if they do not suspend Dumbledore as he wishes ( _Chamber of Secrets_ 336). Because of Lucius’s attention to public perception, he is able to do a great deal of damage while Bellatrix is incarcerated.

A similar pattern continues once Bellatrix is released from Azkaban. Bellatrix and Lucius both try to control a Death Eater mission to the Ministry of Magic, giving orders to the other Death Eaters and to each other. Bellatrix is dangerously volatile, so enraged by Harry insulting Voldemort that for a moment she cares more about hurting him than retrieving the object they were sent for. As always, Malfoy is more pragmatic. Voldemort is disgusted with their failure but takes Bellatrix away to safety while leaving Lucius and the others to be imprisoned. He does not appreciate Lucius’s cautious self-interest. While Bellatrix’s excessive loyalty has its downsides her fearlessness and devotion make her a valuable asset among the Death Eaters. She hesitates only in the face of being harmed by Voldemort, never by her opponents ( _Order of the Phoenix_ 812, _Deathly Hallows_ 462). Still, there is nothing particularly virtuous about Lucius’s caution. His muted enthusiasm for the Death Eaters’ cause does not make his actions more palatable.

Lucius survives the final battle while Bellatrix falls. Lucius is redeemed not by his own actions but by his wife’s. Narcissa lies to protect Harry, protecting her own son in doing so. While her politics are appalling Narcissa herself is a respectable witch, driven mostly by family feeling. She acts precisely as a nineteenth century wife would be expected to, “supply[ing], in some measure, the defects in her husband’s character – thus making him a more perfect man than he otherwise would be” (Alcott quoted in Jones, 124). Bellatrix’s faults are her own. She certainly is not redeemed by Rodolphus, who is injured earlier in _Deathly Hallows_ and never mentioned again. In the Battle of Hogwarts Bellatrix fights three people at once before she dies, still Voldemort’s “last, best lieutenant” ( _Deathly Hallows_ 737). Her death is narratively satisfying and certainly deserved given her crimes. Yet it seems unjust, not that Bellatrix dies, but that she dies when Lucius does not. Lucius is remarkably fortunate to survive two separate stints as a Death Eater because of his lack of conviction, a lack which never stopped him from hurting and terrorizing his enemies. Bellatrix is far from the only monster here.

Different standards for female criminals are not a thing of the distant past. The reaction to Barbara Graham, who was tried for murder in 1953 alongside two male co-conspirators, is strikingly similar to the reaction to Bellatrix. Bellatrix catches people’s attention as much for the novelty of a female Death Eater as for her actions. When ten Death Eaters escape Azkaban, it is Bellatrix who makes the biggest impression. Similarly, news coverage of the murder Graham was involved in focused primarily on her rather than the men involved (Cairns). Years after her trial was over the prosecutor would talk about her – one of several people responsible, with less history of violent crime than the others – as the ringleader of the “Barbara Graham gang who murdered an elderly Burbank widow” (Leavy in Cairns, 146). Even today, women’s violence is considered monstrous and irrational in a way men’s violence is not (Gentry and Sjoberg). Women, especially violent ones, are still held to very different expectations than men.

**Fan Works**

Fanfiction is one way to determine how readers react to Bellatrix and make sense of her reputation. Do they take her relative demonization for granted or seek to explain her inconsistencies? Harry Potter fanfiction was scattered across a variety of specialized sites, especially after fanfiction.net banned sexually explicit stories. Many of those sites no longer exist. To get a sense of the most popular themes in Bellatrix-related fanfiction, in 2015 I examined the twenty stories which received the most favorites on both fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own. Because users can only leave one favorite on a story but many comments, I hoped to avoid artificially favoring multi-chapter stories with this approach.

**_Fanfiction.net_ **

Many of the fanfiction.net stories depict a more explicitly misogynistic world than the original text. The heads of families like the Blacks hold quasi-feudal power, and most stories allow only men to inherit that position. More liberal stories allow women to temporarily lead families until a male heir comes of age. In several stories adult women are treated as wards of their husband or the current head of their birth family, who has considerable influence over their marriages and divorces. In others, married women’s property is controlled by their spouses. For the most part fanfiction.net stories explain witches’ legal status through somewhat incoherent variations on coverture, a legal doctrine under which married women were not legal persons.

Against this backdrop Bellatrix’s presence in the Death Eaters is even more remarkable. The group is overwhelmingly male in all twenty stories yet Bellatrix is considered Voldemort’s second-in-command in fully half of them. Another quarter describe her as uniquely loyal to and favored by Voldemort. Her prominence is owed to her dueling prowess or sadism, and apparently unaffected by her instability. In several stories Bellatrix is brainwashed through spells or a magically binding marriage contract which, as “Passageways” puts it, “would ensure her obedience to her husband’s wishes by an old family ritual that would bind her will to her husband’s.” She is quite literally led into evil by a man who orchestrates her entry into the Death Eaters. Her reasons for joining become immaterial because they are genuinely not her own. Said husband is always Rodolphus Lestrange; every work in which Bellatrix is an adult Death Eater acknowledges their marriage. In many cases the marriage took place against Bellatrix’s wishes; only three stories have her express any affection for Rodolphus. When Bellatrix’s insanity is not because of brainwashing it is the result of childhood abuse, overexposure to dark magic, her time in Azkaban, or some combination of the three.

Just as Bellatrix is corrupted by Rodolphus in these fan works, she can be redeemed by a different lover. Often they enter her life early as a result of time-travel and their influence means that Bellatrix never joins the Death Eaters at all. Other times they become involved after Bellatrix’s brainwashing falters. Occasionally she is redeemed not by a partner but through maternal love. In either case her passions are acceptably feminine and returned by the person she loves. Her actions for the Death Eaters are explained away by her lack of agency. In these stories Bellatrix is mostly innocent, her mistake falling under the influence of evil men.

In the rare stories where Bellatrix is not redeemed, she joins the Death Eaters of her own volition because the organization offers a path to something she desires – power, understanding, or the opportunity to hurt people in a sanctioned way. In these stories her actions are more terrible than in canon but her loyalty less intense. When the Death Eaters no longer serve her purposes she abandons them to pursue her goals by other means. If Bellatrix is a rational actor, if she has reasons for the choices she makes beyond romantic or parental love, then she is terrible indeed.

**_Archive of Our Own_ **

Archive of Our Own and fanfiction.net have some fundamental differences. Fan writing is a deeply communal endeavor; stories are written in response to other fics as well as to the original text (Busse & Hellekson). These communities are relatively small – instead of a unified Harry Potter community, there are many small communities on a variety of sites. On fanfiction.net alone there are more than half a million Harry Potter stories, so fans read and react to the much smaller number of stories that deal with the characters and tropes they’re interested in. Within these small communities fanon eventually develops, interpretations of characters and events that are not fully supported by the original text (Busse & Hellekson). In the fanfiction.net stories Bellatrix’s eyes are often violet; in Archive of Our Own stories Dumbledore tends to be overtly manipulative and evil. These sites support different communities which developed separately.

The sites’ metadata options contribute to differences in the top twenty Bellatrix stories. Fanfiction.net allows limited metadata. Only two or three characters are tagged per story so a search for Bellatrix only brings up stories where she’s a major character (e.g., [Delenda Est](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5511855/1/Delenda-Est)).

Archive of Our Own supports more robust metadata; users can tag secondary characters as well as content warnings and plot points (Organization for Transformative Works). Writers’ actual tagging practices range from the minimal (e.g., [Gamma Orionis](https://archiveofourown.org/works/94142)) to the baroque (e.g., [Rise of the Dark Angel](archiveofourown.org/works/445916)).

 While this metadata allows users to perform complex searches to find exactly what they want, it also makes it more difficult to find stories focused on characters who are more often minor characters. Roughly twice as many of the Archive of Our Own’s Harry Potter stories tag Bellatrix compared to fanfiction.net, but most of them mention her only tangentially.  The most extreme case I encountered is the still-unfinished “A Chance to Change” which tags Bellatrix as a character but doesn’t mention her once in the text of the story.

Relationships are very important in these fan works. Both fanfiction.net and Archive of Our Own include relationships in their metadata, and Busse and Hellekson define primary fanfiction genres by what relationships they focus on – platonic, heteroromantic, or homoromantic (10). The fanfiction.net stories mostly involve a heteroromantic relationship between Bellatrix and Harry (Bellatrix/Harry). The Archive of Our Own stories involve homoromantic or slash relationships instead, most commonly Harry/Voldemort. Site metadata and community attitudes play a role in these differences. As Tosenberger explains in “Homosexuality at the Online Hogwarts,” slash has been controversial for most of its history. Fanfiction.net is a fairly conservative site which has periodically removed stories administrators considered inappropriate, including sexually explicit and real person fiction (fanlore). Fanfiction.net writer jerrway69, who posted two of the top twenty Bellatrix stories there, says in his profile that “I’m really open to giving any pairing a chance. However I’m not a big fan of slash. I guess I’m a little old fashioned that way.” This climate may well have driven slash writers to smaller, pairing-specific archives like The Wolf and Hound. After Archive of Our Own launched in 2007, fanfiction.net policies certainly meant many users moved to the new site.

Along with the high proportion of slash in the Archive of Our Own stories comes a focus on male characters. Their gender politics are not especially progressive. Women are mentioned in passing or dismissed as self-serving and manipulative. Not only are relationships between men centered, male pregnancy is mentioned more frequently than the existence of lesbians. Another two of the twenty stories are erotica which treat women primarily as sex objects. In either case, witches are not the heads of households or of harems. Bellatrix herself is a Death Eater but not Voldemort’s second-in-command; that position goes to Lucius or Harry. She is insane or brainwashed in twelve of the twenty, far more corrupted than corrupting. Leading others into evil is not one of her strengths in these fan works. Evil, insanity, and unfeminine behavior are as intertwined in these stories as in Victorian ideas about transgressive women (McCandless; Showalter). In three stories Bellatrix is insane because her child was taken from her (“Rise of the Dark Angel,” “Withering to Death,” “Perfect Bliss”); in a fourth she returns to sanity after adopting a child (“The Bone Man”); in a fifth her sadism and presence in the Death Eaters are both consequences of her sterility (“The Dark Roses”). The exception is the character study “turncoat: in defense of andromeda tonks nee black” which explores the motives of Bellatrix and other women. To Andromeda, her sister is ultimately a person with agency: “Bella wanted a lot of things, but one of them was to be valuable” and so “Bella made her choices. When she swore herself to Tom Riddle, she wasn’t a child.” It’s centered on choice and personal responsibility, a notable departure from the other Archive of Our Own stories.

Where fanfiction.net stories are preoccupied with redemption, those from Archive of Our Own are more interested in understanding the Death Eaters. This is partially explained by which characters they focus on - it’s one thing to redeem Bellatrix, who may or may not have joined the Death Eaters of her own will, but quite another to redeem Voldemort. Since he founded the Death Eaters, to vindicate him a story must explain his reasons - most achieve this by vilifying Dumbledore and the Death Eaters’ opponents. In fact, while fanfiction.net stories portray Bellatrix as brainwashed by Voldemort or Rodolphus, in these she’s more likely to be brainwashed by Dumbledore. The Death Eaters are presented as in the right or at the very least as a reasonable alternative to their enemies.

These stories which revolve around romantic relationships are read and shared and favorited; they’re a crucial part of the fanfiction landscape but they’re not the whole of it. It would be an oversight to ignore the plot-driven stories and character studies that also deal with Bellatrix. _A Very Potter Musical_ and “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” are both extremely popular works that follow parts of the canon plot closely. “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” has reached more than five million people and been translated into fifteen languages (Tiku; Less Wrong). The first act of _A Very Potter Musical_ has been viewed more than ten million times on YouTube. They make sense of Bellatrix not by redeeming her or justifying the Death Eaters’ actions but by acknowledging that she is a person who wants things, a stance that requires dealing with the inconsistencies of her portrayal in canon. In _A Very Potter Musical_ Bellatrix is Voldemort’s second-in-command and ran the Death Eaters for years in his absence. Rodolphus is never even mentioned. This Bellatrix is competent, respected, and hasn’t spent a decade in Azkaban; like her male counterparts in canon, she benefits from her participation in the Death Eaters. “Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality” goes in the opposite direction; the imprisoned Bellatrix is considered “literally the most evil person in the entire world” (ch. 27). She is powerful, dangerous and pathologically loyal - “the Dark Lord once asked her to Crucio [torture] herself, and she _did it_!” (ch. 63). Bellatrix can be trusted to put Voldemort’s interests before her own because he went to some lengths to magically brainwash her so she could be treated as a weapon rather than a prized general. Both stories take the pieces of Bellatrix that make sense in canon and fill in the blanks while abandoning others in order to write her as a coherent character.

The character study “Gamma Orionis”[2] takes a different approach. It isn’t interested in romantic relationships or even presenting an alternate timeline. “Gamma Orionis” follows the events of the series without a single departure, describing them from Bellatrix’s perspective and filling in parts of her early life which are not described in canon. Bellatrix takes the Dark Mark at sixteen, goes to Azkaban at thirty, and marries Rodolphus in between because he comes from a respected family and spends little time at home, traits which are “personally convenient for Bellatrix” (feverbeats). Her choice to join the Death Eaters is equally pragmatic. Voldemort “sounds like an escape from the mundanity of her life” and “[o]ne never knows when people like him will be useful, and she fully intends to make her way to where she wants to be, allowing Voldemort to take the blame” (feverbeats). Like Lucius Malfoy, she is loyal only when it serves her interests. In “Gamma Orionis” Bellatrix is well aware of how she’s expected to behave and works within those bounds, becomes “good at making do just short of the proper emotions and proper actions, being not-quite-enough but making it look good all the same” (feverbeats). By doing so she becomes a formidable Death Eater without attracting attention, carefully advancing her personal interests while gauging potential consequences. Where male Death Eaters need only maintain plausible deniability, as a witch Bellatrix must consider another set of expectations: if not a housewife at least married, if working for a cause then utterly devoted to it.

Her awareness of these expectations in “Gamma Orionis” illuminates their unspoken presence in other stories. Fan writers have to deal with the misogyny of Bellatrix’s canonical characterization. They can remove it as _A Very Potter Musical_ does, which requires throwing out quite a bit of canon. They can openly address it and allow Bellatrix or other women to navigate these gender expectations, as “Gamma Orionis” and “turncoat: in defense of Andromeda tonks nee black” do. The vast majority of the stories I read choose neither of these options. Instead they accept that Bellatrix is a monster, evil or insane with no motive worth considering, or redeem her by blaming all her actions on others, removing any agency from Bellatrix herself. In these the poison festers – middle-aged women are overruled by family patriarchs half their age, Bellatrix’s personality and every choice are blamed on her infertility.

The ways readers and writers handle Bellatrix are the ways transgressive women more generally are handled. In their 2015 book on women’s political violence, Gentry and Sjoberg note

 

 

> That the mother, monster, and whore narratives marginalize violent women is part of the problem. That they marginalize all women, however, is our primary concern. These narratives define what violent women are (less than women, less than human, crazy, sexualized or controlled), but they also define what all women are (peaceful, incapable of violence, and in the personal rather than political sphere). (23)

In the same way, Bellatrix’s treatment reflects broader attitudes and expectations around violent women. The stories I examined are some of the most broadly read that consider Bellatrix. The ways they make sense of Bellatrix are ones that have reached many people and resonated with a respectable proportion. These methods are the same ones that have been used to explain violent women for hundreds of years. The idea that a woman might join a terrorist group or commit a violent crime for reasons as legitimate as those of a man who does the same remains niche. Instead, when faced with the Lestranges’ torture of the Longbottoms or Bellatrix’s deep loyalty, readers can only “seek [their] explanation in the attributes of fiends.” (Jones 215)

* * *

 

[1] Narcissa Malfoy does attend Death Eater meetings when they are held at her home. However, unlike Lucius she does not appear in the graveyard when Voldemort returns in _Goblet of Fire_ ; since she never summons or is summoned by Voldemort, it seems unlikely that she has a Dark Mark or is formally part of the Death Eaters.

[2] Named for the constellation which encompasses the star Bellatrix, and for “the day she learned that she was just a star in her uncle’s constellation” (feverbeats). Astrologically Bellatrix indicates “[g]reat courage, but a tendency to fight futile or lost causes” and is associated with military honors, poor luck in domestic relationships, and violent death (Wright).

(List of references in chapter 2.)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would love to hear from you. Share your favorite court coverage of a murder trial! Link to your favorite Bellatrix fic!


	2. Works Cited

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you're going to read one of these, make it Ann Jones' [Women Who Kill](https://www.feministpress.org/books-n-z/women-who-kill).

**Primary Sources:**

_A Very Potter Musical_. Writ. Matt Lang, Nick Lang, and Brian Holden. Perf. Darren Criss, Joey Richter, and Bonnie Gruesen. Starkid Productions, 2009. Web. 13 Aug. 2014.

Amoryxya. “Perfect Bliss.” _Archive of Our Own._ 12 Oct. 2014. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Annoy mouse. “The Taste Of Your Magic.” _Fanfiction.net_. 1 May 2014. Web. 18 Jun. 2015.

Demonic-Slytherin224. “The Fire Bird Act I.” _Fanfiction.net_. 6 Apr. 2014. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

dirgewithoutmusic. “turncoat: in defense of andromeda tonks nee black.” _Archive of Our Own._ 4 Oct. 2014. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Drops_of_Nightshade. “The Courtesan.” _Archive of Our Own_. 20 Sep. 2013. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

estalita11. “A Snake Named Voldemort.” _Archive of Our Own._ 23 Apr. 2014. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

feverbeats. “Gamma Orionis.” _Archive of Our Own_. 12 Jun. 2010. Web. 13 Aug. 2014.

First-Born, The. “Assassin or Future Darklord?” _Fanfiction.net_. 16 Nov. 2009. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Formulaic. “Throwing Out the Script.” _Fanfiction.net_. 13 Oct. 2013. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

FrankieSpitfire. “Wicked Serendipity.” _Archive of Our Own._ 19 May 2015. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Heiko2003. “The Dark Witch and the Necromancer ENGLISH.” _Fanfiction.net_. 1 Jan. 2007. Web. 18 Jun. 2015.

Herald_of_Dreams. “The Dark Roses.” _Archive of Our Own_. 24 Oct. 2014. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

____. “Black Fortunes.” _Archive of Our Own._ 23 Aug. 2013. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Inspiration_assaulted. “The Bone Man.” _Archive of Our Own_. 11 Dec. 2013. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Jen (ConsultingWriters). “Docendo Discimus.” _Archive of Our Own._ 24 Jul. 2013. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

jerrway69. “Passageways.” _Fanfiction.net._ 1 Jan. 2015. Web. 18 Jun. 2015.

____.  “Passageways Redux.” _Fanfiction.net._ 31 Dec. 2014. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

____. “Watching Over Harry.” _Fanfiction.net_. 3 May 2012. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Jessiikaa15. “Beautifully Broken.” _Archive of Our Own_. 28 May 2014. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

jon3776. “The Redemption of the Black Sisters.” _Fanfiction.net_. 8 Apr. 2008. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

KuraiBites. “Those Gilded Chains We Wear.” _Fanfiction.net_. 25 Feb. 2012. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Lady_Giovana_Potter_Malfoy. “You Complete Me.” _Archive of Our Own_. 18 Jun. 2014. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

leave this world. “Only Enemies.” _Fanfiction.net_. 26 Mar. 2009. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

Less Wrong. _Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality_. Communications from Elsewhere. Web. 13 Aug. 2014.

LittleMissXanda. “Young Princes.” _Archive of Our Own_. 25 Apr. 2015. Web. 5 Jul. 2015.

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**Author's Note:**

> I would love to hear from you. Share your favorite court coverage of a murder trial! Link to your favorite Bellatrix fic!


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